When a party makes a call (referred to as a caller or calling party) to a telephone, cellular phone, terminal or user equipment (collectively referred to as a station) over a telecommunications network, typically the call is immediately answered by the called party (also referred to as the terminating party), which is the desired outcome and desire of the caller. If the call is not answered or encounters a busy condition, the caller is sometimes given the option to request that the network re-try the call whereby several re-attempts are performed by the network for a period of time. This service is known as Automatic Callback (ACB). In the case of ACB, the caller (who, in this context, is the subscriber to the ACB service) is requesting the network to retry his previous call attempt.
In a business environment, the caller also has the option to impose call waiting on the terminating party, if the terminating party happens to be engaged in another call. This service is known as Originating Call Waiting. But, this service is rarely used and not typically offered to residential subscribers.
Conventionally, a called party, when busy or not answering the call, has a number of options to re-direct the call to voicemail or to forward the call to a different number. The called party also has an option to sequentially, or in parallel, signal one or more other stations when the call is not answered by the station which received the original call notification.
There also exists a menu-driven service, where a call is first answered by an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) machine (also known as media server) and the IVR plays one or more prompts and requests input from the caller before terminating the call to a desired destination. This is a terminating service, that is the called party determines the course of action to be applied to the call.
However, there is no current telephony feature or service that gives the caller an option to dynamically select a call treatment when a call is not answered by the original called party. What is desired is a method and system wherein the caller determines how a call, not immediately answered by the called party, is to be handled by the network.